overcome by nausea and racked by what
he said afterward was "the worst vomit-
ing I've ever experienced." He went
home to recover. A few days later, he
got a call from Swango, who wanted to
know every detail of his symptoms.
Swango's interest seemed so acute that
when he hung up Myers began to have
suspicions about him.
One afternoon a few weeks later,
two other paramedics noticed that some
iced tea they'd brewed had become in-
explicably sweet. Neither had added any
sugar. Alarmed by the recent spate of
illnesses, they dumped their glasses and
began searching for some empty sugar
packets. They found none. Meanwhile,
Swango poured the entire pitcher of tea
into a sink. Later that afternoon, after
Swango had left on an ambulance run,
they noticed that his duffelbag was open
and that a bag stamped "George Keller &
Sons" had fallen out of it. Keller is a large
lawn-and-garden store in Qrincy, and
when the paramedics looked in the
Keller bag they saw two containers of
Terro Ant Killer. The primary active in-
gredient in Terro Ant Killer at that time
was sodium arsenate, an arsenic deriva-
tive, concentrated in a sugar
solution. One of the contain-
ers was empty.
The paramedics began
to recall some odd behavior
of Swango's and some odd
remarks he'd made. Ear-
lier that summer, they had
been watching TV in their
quarters when they heard
the news, accompanied by
graphic footage, that a gun-
man had stormed a Mc-
Donald's restaurant in Cal-
ifornia, killing twenty-one
people. Swango had leaped
from his chair and turned
up the volume, exclaiming,
"That's just great! I love it! I
wish I could have been there
to see it all." Swango later
added, "Every time I think
of a good idea, somebody
beats me to it." Krzystofczyk,
who was often Swango's part-
neJ; recalls that Swango main-
tained a series of large scrap-
books, in which he pasted
articles from newspapers
and magazines detailing in-
cidents of violent death, in-
ARSENIC AND ICED TEA
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cluding numerous accounts of poison-
ings. "He told me it was a good way to
kill people," Krzystofczyk recounted in a
recent interview. Ambulance-attendant
banter is "pretty rough-and-tumble," he
said, and he never really knew if he
should take Swango seriously. "The
more I got to know him," Krzystofczyk
continued, "the more he would verbal-
ize about sordid things." One day, while
they were drinking coffee at the hos-
pital, the paramedics watched a public-
TV broadcast about a notorious serial
killer named Henry Lee Lucas. "Wouldn't
that be great?" Swango asked. "To travel
around the country killing people? Just
moving on, killing some more-a great
life style!"
Krzystofczyk and others also recalled
that Swango liked to say that "the best
thing about being a doctor would be to
come out of the emergency room with a
hard-on to tell some parents that their
kid had just died from head trauma."
He also talked about a sexual "fantasy"
of burying a hatchet in the back of a fe-
male co-worker's head in order to in-
duce seizures.
A week after the paramedics found
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the ant poison, Myers brewed a pot of
iced tea, adding no sweetener. He and
another paramedic left on an ambulance
call. When they returned, Swango was
no longer there; another paramedic said
he had seen Swango racing his car away
from the hospital. The paramedics de-
livered a sample of the tea to William
Gasser, who had been a chemistry pro-
fessor of Swango's at Qrincy Univer-
sity and was a laboratory consultant at
Blessing Hospital. A test revealed the
presence in the sample of a heavy metal-
a finding consistent with the presence
of arsenic.
On October 26th, Swango got a call
at work asking him to stop by the Adams
County Sheriff's Office to supply some
information; Swango had applied to be-
come a deputy coroner and, the sheriff
implied, he was about to get the job. In-
stead, when he arrived he was arrested
and read his rights, and he gave permis-
sion for police to search his apartment.
When the police entered the apart-
ment, they found a book with a skull
and crossbones on the cover lying on a
table in the midst of vials, needles, and
bottles. The book, which is said to be
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I've gave t em corn l ast year.